When it comes to artistic fallout from the attacks on the Twin Towers, what we’ve seen so far has been, for the most part, a boatload of opportunistic crap. (Yeah, Toby Keith, that includes you.) Foer’s second novel looks like a brilliant exception, however. In “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close,” nine-year-old Oskar Schell attempts to understand why his father died in the World Trade Center on September 11–and also what he was doing with a key labeled “Black,” and what would it be like if everyone’s heartbeats were synchronized, or if they could train their anuses to talk, and what if New York had a sixth borough, and a thousand other mysteries of universes both grown-up and imagined. The precocious boy even consults astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and a host of other characters for answers, but, not surprisingly, only uncovers more basic and heartbreaking questions, including the big one: How can we keep the ones we love safe in a world that’s gone mad? Oskar’s rapid-fire stream-of-consciousness is supplemented with photos, drawings, and clever typographical games that remind us that Foer is probably one of only novelists under thirty worth reading.
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